It’s optimism time again, that time of year when various hockey prognosticators paint a rosy pictures of exactly how many points various Edmonton Oilers players will score in 2012-13.

Jordan Eberle go into a slump? No way, say the crystal ball-gazers, at least those who sell their predictions in glossy magazines.

The Sports Forecaster magazine has Eberle putting up 85 points, with Taylor Hall scoring 69 points, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, 77. The other glossy mags, The Hockey News, The Hockey Pooler’s Guide and McKeen’s are all bullish, too, each predicting that each of the young Oilers stars will either equal or better their career bests.

The Hockey Pooler’s Guide that pegs Eberle at 82, Nugent-Hopkins at 72 and Hall at 63.

Gus Katsaros of McKeen’s, has Eberle at 76, Hall at 64 and Nugent-Hopkins at 63.

But Oilers fans had best not plan their playoff parties just yet. When it comes to estimating player point totals, the mainstream prognosticators don’t have a great track record with the Oilers in recent years.

Last season, The Sports Forecaster was out on average 16.4 points per Oilers player. The Hockey News was out by 16.8 points per player. McKeen’s was out by 12.7. Dobber Hockey’s Fantasy Guide was out 13.9 points per player.

The mistakes came most often from over-inflated point totals. These four bastions of the hockey pool prediction game over-estimated Oilers point totals 52 times, under-estimating players just 29 times.

Why the over-optimism?

Could the desire for magazine sales be one reason? I mean, what Oilers fan is going to buy a magazine that predicts Eberle crashes this year? Who is going to be inspired to buy that it’s reasonable to expect 55 points for Eberle and 67 for Hall and Nugent-Hopkins? But that is the sober message from Lowetide blogger Allan Mitchell of the Team 1260.

For the second year in a row, Mitchell’s predictions out-performed all the magazine rack. On average, Mitchell was out just 12.4 points per player. He over-estmated 13 players, but under-estimated 12 of them.

I put the notion that glossy mags have a commercial reason to over-estimate to The Sports Forecaster’s hockey editor Gabriel Sarnesi. Sarnesi didn’t buy it, saying his magazine over-estimated the Oilers because the players are young guys on the rise and can be expected to do better.

“Last year was pretty disappointing for a lot of players on the Oilers,” Sarnesi said.

When it came to the Oilers, the best prognosticator was Tom Awad of Hockey Prospectus for the second year in a row. Awad, an electrical engineer in Montreal, uses something he calls the “Vukota” system to make his predictions. Vukota was out on average 9.9 points per Oilers player.

When he erred, Awad’s mistakes tended to be less extreme. For instance, almost without exception the prognosticators grossly over-estimated the production of Linus Omark, Magnus Paajarvi, Eric Belanger, Ryan Whitney, Taylor Hall and Ales Hemsky. But Vukota came closest to the mark with Hemsky, Belanger and Hall.

All of the other prognosticators had Hemsky putting up 52 to 73 points but Vukota predicted Hemsky would score 43 points. In the end, he put up just 36 points. Awad was the least wrong, which in the prediction game is darn good.

Vukota predicts the future of a player like Hemsky by factoring in his last two seasons, focusing on games played, shots, goals, assists and a few other things. It then predicts his future points total based on how players with similar numbers have done in the past.

Predicting point totals is a tricky business, Awad says, because if a player is an established 50-point guy, his point totals will shoot up or down 10 points in a year simply due to such things as luck and the quality of his teammates and competition. Even a strong prediction system will be off by 10-to-13 points per player, he says. A perfected system would be off about eight or nine points per player.

But he adds, “I can’t do much better, and I don’t think anybody can do much better. There’s a theoretical level to how much you can predict.”

As for next season, Awad’s Vukota predicts 74 points for Eberle, 58 for Hall and 59 for Nugent-Hopkins.

Me, I’m at 70 for Nugent-Hopkins, 68 for Eberle, and 58 for Hall. I’m not willing to bet I’ll do better than Vukota or Lowetide, but I’d be happy to make a bet with any of the glossy mags who are wearing glasses even rosier than my own.

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